HT-SPOTi: A rapid drug susceptibility test (DST) to evaluate antibiotic resistance profiles and novel chemicals for anti-infective drug discovery

Cynthia A. Danquah, Arundhati Maitra, Simon Gibbons, Jane Faull, Sanjib Bhakta

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    24 Citations (SciVal)

    Abstract

    Antibiotic resistance is one of the major threats to global health and wellbeing. The past decade has seen an alarming rise in the evolution and spread of drug-resistant strains of pathogenic microbes. The emergence of extensively drug resistant (XDR) strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and antimicrobial resistance among the ESKAPE (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumanii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, andEnterobacter species) as well as fungal pathogens (such as certain species of Candida, Aspergillus, Cryptococcus, and Trichophyton) poses a significant 21st century scientific challenge. With an extremely limited arsenal of efficacious antibiotics, techniques that can (a) identify novel antimicrobials and (b) detect antimicrobial resistance are becoming increasingly important. In this article, we illustrate the HT-SPOTi, an assay that is principally based on the growth of an organism on agar medium containing a range of different concentrations of drugs or inhibitors. The simple methodology makes this assay ideal for evaluating novel antimicrobial compounds as well as profiling an organism’s antibiotic resistance profile.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)17.8.1-17.8.12
    Number of pages12
    JournalCurrent Protocols in Microbiology
    Volume2016
    Early online date8 Feb 2016
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Feb 2016

    Keywords

    • Antimicrobial resistance
    • Diagnosis
    • Drug discovery
    • Drug susceptibility testing (DST)
    • HT-SPOTi
    • Infectious diseases
    • Whole-cell phenotypic evaluation

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